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tv   CNN Newsroom  CNN  July 21, 2012 4:30am-5:00am PDT

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point. they have 300 unarmed advisers. essentially administrators in country under the head of a two star. so there's an international body that is there to observe what's going on. they're essentially holed up at various hotels and protected and out of the way. so they're achieving no in-state, although the united nations did just extend their presence in country. so the united nations is not going to resolve this issue. what has to happen in parallel, and secretary rice indicated this will happen -- or am bass tkar rice indicated this will happen, is that the united states will work with other partners chart tore try to achieve some type of in ste which would separate the forces. frankly, we don't see that happening unless there is some presence peacemakers as we call them as opposed to piecekeepers. >> a blast claims the lives of three top officials.
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al asad's brother-in-law, his defense minister and security adviser. that kind of blow is this? >> it not only speaks to those individuals. we should cry no tears for their departure. assad now has to look around "360" degrees and try to determine where his weak points are. he's probably going to see that it is very, very weak in a number of places. so my suggestion is, and it's not based on any intelligence right now. but if you're looking -- if past is prologue, we can see assad to get out of the country. probably looking for some way to depart. maybe russia is facilitating that maybe through proxies so assad and his family can disappear. then what you'll really see on the ground in damascus is complete chaos in terms of revenge killings. old and new animosities coming
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out, opposition forces that are galvanized for the departure of assad but have not come together in terms of what they want syria to look like coming forward. so it will be an incredibly chaotic scene as assad's former partners try to strike their own deals to get out with their lives. they're going to have tie hard time finding an exit. >> james" spider" marks, thank you for your insight. >> thanks, gary. >> the next step with the investigation into the colorado shooting. the fbi has taken a role in that right now. what are we looking for? we will delve into that. thanks for babysitting the kids, brittany.
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mountain time in colorado. welcome back, everyone. i'm gary tuchman. let's get you back up to speed on the latest from colorado. police are still 30 minutes away from getting back to work on james holmes's apartment. probably 1:30 now we're being told, 7:00 mountain time, 9:00 eastern time. holmes is the suspect in the horrific shooting that killed 12 people in colorado. police say the apartment is booby-trapped and it may take days to get inside. ♪ this was the scene last night in front of the theater where the shooting took place. this morning the names of the victims are starting to come out. we'll have more on the victims throughout this morning. let's get you out to aurora right now where jim spellman is standing by outside the theater. jim, are police expected back this morning to keep going through the building? >> yeah.
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police are still on site. surrounding this movie theater there are still cars from patrons who went to see bahtman movie. police had to go through and make sure none of that was involved in the crime scene. they were able to get the last of the bodies out as they were ale to process the crime spree. they have notified all families. we expect those names later this morning. >> we saw video, jim, from the vigil last night. how is the community coping? >> well, you know, i'll tell you, after columbine, this community here in the denver area has really been very guarded about the legacy of columbine. i'm pretty sure that's become a positive thing. and you think you will see the community come together as well. sunday night they're planning a big vigil. something for the alcohol communi
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something for the whole community to rally around. thinking about their community and how they're strong, resilient and how they're going to move past this, gary. >> jim, everyone talks about columbine, remembering columbine. that was 13 years ago, 1999. 13 people were killed at columbine high school, 12 so far in this tragedy. jim spellman, thank you very much. investigators are having trouble getting into the apartment of james holmes, the suspect in yesterday's deadly shooting. inside are trip wires and ammunition. there's lots of ammunition. it is very dangerous. they will try to get in with the bomb disposal unit today. we anticipate at 7:00 mountain time, 9:00 eastern time. joining me now tom tpaoupb take, former assistant director of the fbi. tom, thank you for joining us. what are the top priorities for the investigators who are on the scene right now? what are they doing first? >> good morning, gary. i think they're still assessing what they have inside that apartment to the best of their ability to do it from outside the apartment.
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they would have run optical devices into it, infrared scanners, any number of devices to try to analyze from the outside. but at some point the only way to do that is for a live person to go inside there. one of the other aspects going on investigatively would be to determine did holmes have the the capability to make booby-traps to do all of that. he may have just strung a bunch of wires around and put containers in containers around that aren't sphroes and i was not wired to explode when somebody goes in there. that they don't know. but they have to prepare for the worst that he did know. but investigatively they will be trying to look at how he would have learned how to do this. would he have obtained the information off the internet, taken out library books on how to do various explosives constructions. the problem is whatever literature or computer access he
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may have had is in the apartment with his computers and whatever printed material he may have. so that's the problem. they're trying to figure out what his capability was. does he have the expertise, what did he learn, if they could identify specifically that they did learn,000 make explosive devices like that, what technique? wh school of making bombs did he learn that from which would help them identify how to try to fely neutralize the situation. >> why would he do this in the first place? why not enough to do the evil thing that he did? why is he doing this to his apartment? >> actually, gary, i think that is beyond my expertise. we're talking about his mental condition, whether he's a psychopath or had a seizure or breakdown in the last couple of months that caused him to want to go obtain these weapons and ammunition and devices and go
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forward with this attack. i think everyone -- >> tom, not the attack but why do this to his apartment? from dealing with pycho paths in your career, what's the purpose of doing that? was he trying to kill more people, trying to scare people? why was he doing this? >> at the minimum, he's tried to scare people and he's done it. he's made the authorities very leery of going in. you have several buildings evacuated. people are displaced and homeless because of him. that's the minimum. if he had the capability and did wire it up to explode, then obviously he's looking to kill the police and the agents who go to conduct the crime scene investigation. it would have been set up for them to be harmed or killed as soon as they entered that apartment. so that we don't know. as i said, you won't know for sure if the explosives experts determine and they may find out the hard way, unfortunately, that he did have the capability
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and did in fact, wire that place up to explode. >> tom fuentes, thank you. one man, three deadly minutes. that's all it took to kill 12 people and injure 58 others. i will speak with a firearms expert about just how powerful those guns were. that's coming up next. stay with us. [music] see life in the best light. transitions® lenses automatically filter just the right amount of light. so you see everything the way it's meant to be seen. experience life well lit, ask for transitions adaptive lenses. wouldn't it be nice if there was an easier, less-expensive option than using a traditional lawyer? well, legalzoom came up with a better way.
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people and injure 58 others.
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police say the suspect who opened fire on a crowded movie theater in colorado was armed with four guns, all purchased legally. take a look at this. he made it inside the theater with an ar-15 rifle, 12-gauge shotgun, two hand guns and a gas canister. he bought 6,000 rounds of ammunition purchased online. he stopped only to reload. chris robinson is a firearms expert. chris, thank you very much for joining us. we just showed the type of guns used in this shooting. the question a lot of people want to know is, where would the guy have gotten all the stuff? could i buy these guns? >> absolutely. >> and how long would it take to get these guns? >> around two to three days.
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they run a background check. as long as you pass the background check you buy the guns in two to three days. >> i have a clean record, i could easily get the same weapons and ammunition that he had? >> absolutely. >> and through the theater with a gas canister. what kind of affect did it have? >> it is very effective on your nose, mucous, sinuses. it burns the skin to a certain extent. if you're not used to it you would have a rash effect on the victims. >> now, we're hearing that the bullets were so powerful, the weapons were so powerful they actually went through the wall of theater 9 into theater 8, injuring some in that theater. were these excessively powerful weapons. >> the bullet is traveling 2,200 miles per hour. >> a baseball is 100 miles per hour. that's 22 times faster than the faster pitcher in major league baseball. >> that's correct.
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and the energy of the bullet itself is 1200 pounds of energy. that's what our military uses. so it's the same kind of weapon. >> and it's all legal. tell me about the ammunition you were talking about. >> the different types of ammunition, the drum holds 100 cartridges in the drum magazine. you could purchase that easily from any magazine or gun store if you know where to get stpwhreut do you think this guy knew what he was doing? >> i think it was clear and thought out. i think he had it well planned. the tear gas canister, the types of weapons, the glocks, they're all designed to do excessive bodily harm. >> could different gun laws in this country have made a difference? >> i don't think so personally. if you want to go buy a gun we can buy a gun in atlanta right
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now. i can take you a number of places that i know of personally where i can buy any gun that you would like on the street and i don't have to pass any laws. >> legally? >> no, sir. right off the street. >> illegally. >> that's right. >> say everyone followed the laws. but you're not saying that's realistic. >> no, sir, i don't. it would make it more strict for people that are following the laws than people who are going to break the law. >> it's certainly a basis for an argument a lot of people will have in the days, weeks and months to come after this horrifying incident. chris, thank you for talking with us. >> thank you, sir. >> i appreciate your time. a witness says she had five seconds to determine whether she lived or whether she died. we'll talk to that witness in a moment. but first meet the man who is making magic. fully interactive canvasses tomorrow at 2:00 p.m. eastern. ♪
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after i got it, i fell to the ground. i was just waiting for the shooting to stop. and it was the thought that passed my mind that, like, this is not actually happen. it was hard to believe it even when it was happening. and so i, i mean, on some level, i guess i realized, there's a shooter in the theory, and he's killing people. but on another level, i guess i really didn't want to believe it. >> the story in colorado is about more than a troubled young
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man who opened fire in a movie theater. it's about the people he killed, we want to emphasize that. the victims and the victims' families who have suffered so much. the victims are still being identified and their families are being notified. the very first name that came out of the chaos was jessica ghawi. poppy harlow has more. >> reporter: a fiery redhead, passionate above all else, in her personal and professional life, her brother jordan tells us. just 24 years old, jessica ghawi beginning life on her own, an aspiring sports caster who lived in denver and went by jessica redfield on the air. what do you want to tell the world about jessica, your sister, who lost her life far too young? >> i want her story to be told. i want her to be remembered and not this gunman. it's a tragedy, but we need to focus on the victims. >> reporter: jessica's grieving mother. >> i'll never have her to hug again or get a text message
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again or get a funny facebook picture. that's the hard part right now. just knowing, those are the things i'm never going to get to experience again. i was blessed. only for 25 years, but i was blessed. >> reporter: she moved from her texas home to denver after begging her parents to let her pursue her dream job. >> it looks like you got hit with a puck. >> reporter: she'd been looking forward to this big night. jessica's close high school friend brent lowic was visiting her to share a special screening of this batman movie together. brent was shot in the backside and also suffered shrapnel wuds. his father says he's undergone surgery, though still has major injuries. active on twitter, jessica's last tweet came around midnight, saying, "movie doesn't start for
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20 minutes." she had narrowly escaped tragedy just a month ago. a sad irony, her brother and friends tell us she was at the eaton center toronto mall, visiting her boyfriend, jay, a minor league hockey player, when a shooting broke out in the mall food court, just three minutes after jessica left it. she recounted the horror on her blog. "i was reminded that we don't know when or where our time on earth will end. when or where we will breathe our last breath. i say all the time that every moment we have to live our life is a blessing. i know i truly understand how blessed i am for each second i am given." >> that's cnn's poppy harlow. we've got much more ahead on cnn saturday morning about the shooting in colorado right after this.
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we were just watching the movie. everything was all quiet. there was something thrown across the room. and in the bottom right, i saw flashes of light followed by loud noises. i'm thinking someone is just playing around and it's firecrackers. >> people are shot. >> all you hear is just gunfire, left and right. anytime someone would try to get up and run away, he would just shoot them. >> i felt the pepper in my throat and everything and realized it was gunfire. i heard, "get down, get down." >> he didn't have a specific agenda, he was just shooting people left and right. >> you couldn't see anything. like, you couldn't see the pepper spray that was in your throat. you just felt it. and then from there, i just tried to help the girls that i was with get out. >> he was shooting little kids. ke